The Sciku Project

Supersonic winds
Strong enough to blow our star
Sun feeling ghosted

by Martina Matijević

WASP-127b located 520 light-years away, experiences equatorial winds reaching supersonic speeds of 33,000 km/h, the fastest ever measured on a planet. This gas giant orbits its host star every four days, enduring temperatures over 1,127 Celsius degrees. The discovery was made with the CRIRES+.

Further reading:

‘Extreme supersonic winds measured on planet outside our Solar System’, 2025, Science Daily, available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/01/250121125759.htm

‘CRIRES⁺ transmission spectroscopy of WASP-127 b – Detection of the resolved signatures of a supersonic equatorial jet and cool poles in a hot planet’, 2025, Nortmann, L., et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics, available: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450438

Author bio:

Matijević has orbited the Sun 23 times, making her 23 years old in Earth’s timekeeping system. A science enthusiast and poet, her work has appeared in 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, View from Atlantis and Awen. You can discover more of her poetry here: https://tinamatijev.wixsite.com/martina-matijevi 

when earth spun faster
Luca settled in the sea
and begat us all

by James Penha

Last July, researchers at Bristol University concluded that Luca (last universal common ancestor from which all life on Earth stems) lived 4.2 billion years ago—early enough in the planet’s existence to suggest that life might be an inevitability rather than an accident.

Further reading:

‘Luca is the progenitor of all life on Earth. But its genesis has implications far beyond our planet’, 2025, Ball, P., The Observer, available: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/19/luca-is-the-progenitor-of-all-life-on-earth-but-its-genesis-has-implications-far-beyond-our-planet

‘The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system’, 2024, Moody, E.R.R., et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution, available: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02461-1

Author bio:

Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him 🌈) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. Penha edits TheNewVerse.News, an online journal of current-events poetry. You can find out more about James’ poetry on his website https://jamespenha.com and catch up with him on BlueSky @jamespenha.bsky.social

Read more of James’ sciku here.